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That was devolution, not revolution. The only reason US companies got to that market was political decision in Moscow to halt development of their own original

That was devolution, not revolution. The only reason US companies got to that market was political decision in Moscow to halt development of their own original systems and start to copy. That was very wrong decision, led to 99% dependency of later Russia from Wintel. Now Russia struggles to get out of this dependency, but I am afraid its too late.

afsina 11y ago
They lost the war on technology long ago. What happened after was just inevitable.
- ommunist 11y ago
  Dude, we had not even started. I personally recall, that IT serving РБМК1500 nuclear breeder had nothing to do with Wintel and programming was on some sort of cyrillic Assembler. I knew one of the actual programmers in Vysaginas.
  - afsina 11y ago
    Consider that even the mighty Japan, who was ahead of US on electronics lost the game on computers and software. Soviets, where science and technology were fully controlled by state were bound to lose the fight on consumer centric products. And this was not so different for Russian Federation, no time, no human resources, no entrepreneurship.
prodmerc 11y ago
Man, wtf are you spouting. You imply that MS/Intel are out to get the Russian government or something? The only thing Russia is dependent on when it comes to IT is the English language, lol, and that may be more of an advantage than disadvantage. Struggles to get out? Well, hey, good luck with that, maybe you'll get out and never be able to visit Reddit, Imgur, Hacker News and other Western shit.
- whitebait 11y ago
  Have a cup of coffee and then try reading the parent comment again. The parent very clearly attributes the blame to the Russian states political decision to "halt development of their own original systems and start to copy".
anon4 11y ago
I have no idea what you're smoking, but I'd like some of that, please. If they had developed their own system, they would be absolutely incompatible with standard systems and have to reinvent everything, while now they can just build on what's already there. The slight specific advantage of doing one or two things differently is massively overshadowed by the advantage of being able to coöperate and exchange data easily with the rest of the world.
- tov_objorkin 11y ago
  This one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer incompatible with everything ahaha
- ommunist 11y ago
  of course you do not have idea of what I am smoking. I smoked a lot of technical documentation in the 90-ies. The USSR had some sort of the Internet over radio for antiaircraft missiles distributed squadrons. Completely original. It had global ultra long wave system for submarines communication. And of course it had original competing computer architectures. That was not competition as you know it. Normally state financed a bunch of perspective tech, but only few best suited for economical situation went to series. Most of educational IT came from Bulgaria and East Germany, and there was colossal own production in Minsk. Minsk still produces a hell of cheap chips for watches by the way. But military applications and industrial IT was in many cases original, especially in nuclear energy production and space.
- dTal 11y ago
  Love that you assume the "rest of the world" would have gone with the American solution.

afsina 11y ago

They lost the war on technology long ago. What happened after was just inevitable.

ommunist 11y ago
Dude, we had not even started. I personally recall, that IT serving РБМК1500 nuclear breeder had nothing to do with Wintel and programming was on some sort of cyrillic Assembler. I knew one of the actual programmers in Vysaginas.
- afsina 11y ago
  Consider that even the mighty Japan, who was ahead of US on electronics lost the game on computers and software. Soviets, where science and technology were fully controlled by state were bound to lose the fight on consumer centric products. And this was not so different for Russian Federation, no time, no human resources, no entrepreneurship.

prodmerc 11y ago

Man, wtf are you spouting. You imply that MS/Intel are out to get the Russian government or something? The only thing Russia is dependent on when it comes to IT is the English language, lol, and that may be more of an advantage than disadvantage. Struggles to get out? Well, hey, good luck with that, maybe you'll get out and never be able to visit Reddit, Imgur, Hacker News and other Western shit.

whitebait 11y ago
Have a cup of coffee and then try reading the parent comment again. The parent very clearly attributes the blame to the Russian states political decision to "halt development of their own original systems and start to copy".

anon4 11y ago

I have no idea what you're smoking, but I'd like some of that, please. If they had developed their own system, they would be absolutely incompatible with standard systems and have to reinvent everything, while now they can just build on what's already there. The slight specific advantage of doing one or two things differently is massively overshadowed by the advantage of being able to coöperate and exchange data easily with the rest of the world.

tov_objorkin 11y ago
This one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer incompatible with everything ahaha
ommunist 11y ago
of course you do not have idea of what I am smoking. I smoked a lot of technical documentation in the 90-ies. The USSR had some sort of the Internet over radio for antiaircraft missiles distributed squadrons. Completely original. It had global ultra long wave system for submarines communication. And of course it had original competing computer architectures. That was not competition as you know it. Normally state financed a bunch of perspective tech, but only few best suited for economical situation went to series. Most of educational IT came from Bulgaria and East Germany, and there was colossal own production in Minsk. Minsk still produces a hell of cheap chips for watches by the way. But military applications and industrial IT was in many cases original, especially in nuclear energy production and space.
dTal 11y ago
Love that you assume the "rest of the world" would have gone with the American solution.